0:00

For the last two weeks I've had the great

0:02

pleasure of traveling around Australia and speaking

0:04

at various events in Perth, Sydney,

0:07

Melbourne, Newcastle and Canberra. While

0:09

a terrific honour for me, this is undoubtedly

0:11

a bad sign for Australia. The tragedy of

0:13

my career is that I say obvious things

0:16

that everyone knows and am lavished

0:18

with entirely unmerited praise and response. It

0:20

pains me to point this out, but if

0:22

Constance and Kissen has been invited to give

0:24

a series of talks in your country, all

0:26

is not well. This is the

0:28

bad news for Australia. It appears to have

0:31

been infected with the same mind virus as the

0:33

rest of the Anglosphere. The symptoms

0:35

are all too familiar. Identity politics

0:37

fueled by the false teaching of history.

0:39

Political polarisation. Two-tier

0:42

policing with anti-lockdown protests brutally suppressed,

0:44

followed by the police standing by

0:46

as crowds chant, gas the Jews

0:49

outside the Sydney Opera House due

0:51

to fears of upsetting social cohesion.

0:54

The number of children being treated

0:56

for gender dysphoria at Victoria's Royal

0:58

Children's Hospital's Gender Clinic has

1:01

increased by over a thousand percent in

1:03

less than a decade. Some

1:05

journalists at the ABC, the country's

1:07

national broadcaster, avoid revealing

1:09

their nuanced political views to colleagues

1:12

for fear of appearing insufficiently woke.

1:15

Corporations jump on every progressive

1:17

cause with enthusiasm. Activists

1:19

want to cancel Australia Day. Instead

1:21

of being a day of national unity, they

1:23

want to turn it into one of shame

1:25

and self-flagellation. It is all happening

1:28

for the same reasons too. In

1:30

the words of pioneer investor Peter Thiel, courage

1:32

is now in shorter supply than

1:34

genius. This is sadly

1:36

also true in the land down under.

1:39

While the centre-left appeases its extremist

1:41

fringe, many on the centre-right hesitate

1:43

to challenge the cultural vandalism they

1:46

observe for fear of being described

1:48

as culture warriors. And with good

1:50

reason. While the symptoms of the mind

1:52

virus are visible to outside observers like

1:54

me and those in the media and

1:56

politics, in truth, for the moment, the

1:59

infection remains completely comparatively asymptomatic.

2:01

This is the good news. As things

2:04

stand, Australia's biggest challenge is not extremism,

2:06

it is apathy, born of comfort. Life

2:09

here is good, and the differences to the

2:11

rest of the Anglosphere are remarkable. Unlike

2:14

major American and increasingly British cities, the

2:16

streets and parks here are not overrun

2:18

with people suffering from the scourges of

2:20

addiction, homelessness and crime. Sydney

2:23

and Melbourne ranked among the top 10

2:25

safest cities in the world in the

2:27

Economist Intelligence Unit Safe Cities Index 2021,

2:30

and is the third and fourth most

2:32

liveable cities in the world according

2:34

to the Economist Intelligence Unit's Global

2:36

Liveability Index 2023. With mining, drilling

2:39

and agriculture responsible for over 70%

2:41

of the country's exports, Australia has

2:43

highly paid jobs for those outside

2:45

of the laptop class. A

2:48

mine truck driver can earn over 130,000 Australian dollars a year,

2:50

that's nearly 70,000 pounds, while going down into the

2:56

mine can bring as much as 250,000 Aussie dollars, 130,000 pounds.

2:58

I know many lawyers, senior

3:02

doctors and other professionals in London who can

3:05

only dream of such earnings. Indeed,

3:07

a doctor friend doubled her salary the

3:09

day she moved to Australia from the

3:11

UK. And while many will tell

3:13

you that political polarization is the worst it's

3:16

ever been, they'll often do so while

3:18

sitting around the table with people of

3:20

different political viewpoints. As a senior politician

3:22

put it at one such gathering, I

3:24

don't want the other party to be elected, but

3:26

I know they eventually will be, and I want

3:29

them to be the best possible government for Australia

3:31

when they are. It's hard to put

3:33

into words how much this is not the case in

3:35

Britain and America. On cultural issues

3:37

too, while apathy is how woke

3:39

activists are able to continue hollowing out

3:42

the country's institutions, when forced

3:44

to step away from the barbie and vote

3:46

in the Aboriginal voice referendum last year, ordinary

3:49

Australians made their feelings clear.

3:52

Fronted by the courageous Jacinta Price,

3:54

the no-camp campaign overturned a one-sided

3:56

onslaught from the country's media, corporate

3:59

and political elite, with

4:01

60% voting against embedding identity

4:03

politics in the constitution. On

4:06

immigration too, Australians engage in debates that many

4:08

of us would give our right arms to

4:10

have. While tens of thousands

4:12

of people come to the UK on small

4:14

boats illegally every year, and millions

4:16

stream in through the poorer southern border of

4:18

the United States, Australia has

4:20

comprehensively solved this problem. Far

4:23

from being some sort of voodoo magic, which is what

4:25

it feels like it would take to address this issue

4:27

in our countries, all that was

4:29

needed for the then Prime Minister Tony

4:31

Abbott to stare down a resistance civil

4:34

service and legal challenges to deliver Operation

4:36

Sovereign borders in 2013. While

4:39

Abbott still attracts criticism and protest, as I

4:41

discovered when I had the honour of joining

4:44

him on stage at Sydney University event, the

4:46

facts of the matter are simple. 74

4:49

people came to Australia illegally on boats in 2023,

4:51

down from 17,202 in 2012. It

4:58

can be done, it just takes

5:00

balls, and miraculously some Aussie politicians

5:02

still have them. In many

5:04

ways, travelling to Australia from Britain feels like

5:07

a journey 10 years into the past. In

5:09

previous decades that would have sounded like a

5:11

hack joke meant to paint Aussies as provincial

5:14

and unsophisticated people, but today it

5:16

is both a compliment and a warning. Australians

5:18

talk proudly of having the most

5:21

successful multicultural country in the world,

5:24

because they have yet to discover what both David

5:26

Cameron and Angela Merkel were forced to confess many

5:28

years ago. Multiculturalism

5:30

doesn't work. Neither Cameron

5:32

nor Merkel were hard right culture warriors,

5:34

but the reality of what they saw

5:36

in their respective countries forced them to

5:39

acknowledge the truth. Immigration,

5:41

when carefully managed and highly selective, can

5:43

offer tremendous benefits. With the

5:45

higher the level of migration, and the more

5:48

divergent the cultural and religious backgrounds from which

5:50

people come, the more punitive the

5:52

diminishing returns. When I came

5:54

to the UK in the mid 90s,

5:56

the British public were entirely unconcerned about

5:58

immigration. 3%

6:00

describing it as a major issue in the year that I

6:03

came. Back in the early 90s,

6:05

net migration was running at about 54,000 people a

6:07

year. This

6:09

was followed almost immediately by the hugely

6:11

popular election of Tony Blair, who abandoned

6:14

all caution with Britain welcoming more

6:16

people during his premiership than

6:19

had come between the Battle of Hastings in 1066 and

6:21

1950. David

6:23

Cameron, who I mentioned earlier, his

6:25

conservative successor and his innumerable replacements,

6:28

failed to stem the tide. Despite

6:30

the popular uprising that we call Brexit, the

6:33

latest net migration figures up to June 2023

6:35

were 672,000 people. The

6:40

result? sectarian clashes in major

6:43

British cities. Parliament abandoning

6:45

its own rules to appease Islamists and

6:47

rising ethnic tensions. Concerns

6:50

about social cohesion, so widely shared by

6:52

police chiefs and politicians across the Western

6:54

world, have actually contributed to

6:56

its decline. It seems to me

6:58

that Australia is in danger of making many of the

7:01

same mistakes. In the year ending

7:03

30 June 2023, legal migration contributed a

7:05

net gain of 518,000 people to the

7:09

country's population. This is a record

7:11

level, and for a country of just 26 million

7:13

people, this is a higher level of immigration per

7:15

capita than even in the UK. The

7:18

creation of a two-tier conversation about race

7:20

is also firmly underway. The

7:22

Nazi football player pleaded not guilty in a

7:24

London court recently, and is fighting to have

7:26

the charge of racially aggravated

7:28

harassment of the officer thrown out

7:31

after allegedly calling him a stupid

7:33

white bastard. The officers white

7:35

and Sam Kerr, the player in question, is not.

7:38

She not only refused to apologise,

7:40

but has in fact secured apologies

7:42

from people like former socceroo and

7:44

prominent anti-racism advocate Craig Foster, who

7:46

initially criticised her comments. In

7:48

his pathetic and grovelling apology to Kerr,

7:51

Foster showed all the signs of

7:53

having been properly re-educated. Citing

7:56

the Diversity Council of Australia's definition

7:58

of racism, which references the perpetrator

8:00

being in a position of race-based

8:02

societal power, Foster said racism

8:05

cannot be committed against a white person

8:07

as they're not a member of a

8:09

marginalized group. This is the

8:11

great paradox of the woke takeover of any

8:13

society. Why are you being a divisive

8:15

culture warrior? They'll scream at you as

8:17

they take the foundations of your society

8:20

apart brick by brick. It

8:22

is difficult to oppose robustly until the

8:24

majority of people notice the problem, by

8:26

which point it may be too late. Being

8:29

ordinary Australians to recognize the threat before

8:31

the dangerous threshold is reached is

8:33

the biggest challenge for the country's sensible elite.

8:36

Whether they can succeed remains to be seen.

8:39

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